Myanmar conflict may bring ethnic groups together

The Daily Star
Mokbul Morshed Ahmad
June 12, 2021

Photo: Reuters

With the February 2021 military coup, Myanmar once again hit global media headlines. While the military junta continues to clamp down on pro-democracy protestors and the country is wracked with conflict and unrest, how will the changing political situation affect the Rohingya community in Bangladesh and in Rakhine State in Myanmar?

More than one-third of Myanmar's population is composed of ethnic minorities, who inhabit a vast frontier where the country's natural resources are concentrated. They have staged periodic insurgencies against the military, which has ruled the country for most of the past six decades. The National League for Democracy (NLD) is the only nationally popular political force in Myanmar, but it has a recent history of turning a blind eye to the persecution of ethnic minorities, especially in Rakhine. Although the party won a landslide re-election in November 2020, more than one million members of ethnic minorities were disenfranchised during the vote. The British, who colonised what was then known as Burma, called the country "a zone of racial instability".

Why the National Unity Government’s Statement on Myanmar’s Rohingya Is Important

THE I DIPLOMAT

Angshuman Choudhury

June 09, 2021

The shadow government’s formal pledges to offer a persecuted minority justice and rights could help shape Myanmar’s future.

On June 3, Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) – a shadow government formed by civilian lawmakers deposed by the military in its 1 February coup – released a historic position paper on the country’s Rohingya community. The three-page document formally lays down a set of pledges and positions that mark a clear break from the past in the relationship between the Myanmar state and the stateless Rohingya Muslim community.

Welcomed by many as a progressive declaration, it sets out with the premise that “everyone in the Union has full enjoyment of fundamental human rights” and that the NUG will “not tolerate any form of discrimination.” It asserts that “all ethnic groups who are native to the Union have full enjoyment of individual rights held by individual people and collective rights held by ethnic groups.”

The Arakan Army, Myanmar Military Coup and Politics of Arakan

tni
Authors: Kyaw Lynn
Programmes:Myanmar in Focus

A Myanmar Commentary by Kyaw Lynn

In the aftermath of the November general election the intense fighting between the national armed forces (Tatmadaw) and the Arakan Army came to an unexpected halt. Since the February coup of the State Administration Council, the situation has remained delicately poised. Political sentiment is very high. But Rakhine nationalism is presently on a different cycle to political movements in other parts of the country. In this commentary Kyaw Lynn outlines why the coming months will remain a time of high tension and uncertainty in Arakan politics.

Arakan Army troops in forest training / Photo credit JG

When political analysts in Myanmar and beyond discuss the role of ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) in the struggle against the military coup in February, the Arakan Army (AA) becomes one of the key political forces in shaping their dialogue and perceptions. The AA, the military wing of the United League of Army (ULA), is the only armed group that can challenge the power of the national armed forces (Tatmadaw) on Myanmar’s western frontiers. This became especially evident during the 2018-20 period when the ULA-AA demonstrated its sharp resistance against the power of the centralised Myanmar state. Behind the ULA rise, there were three key features: popular support among the Rakhine population, well-trained soldiers, and a younger leadership that read the evolving mood and political situation in the country perceptively well.

Myanmar: The mysterious deaths of the NLD party officials

B B C

By Jonathan Head
South East Asia correspondent
07th June 2021

Khin Maung Latt (L) and Zaw Myat Lynn (R) both died earlier in MarcI MAGE COPYRIGHT COLLAGE

The violence used by Myanmar's armed forces against unarmed opponents since the coup in February has shocked the world; more than 800 people have been killed, most by military gunfire. But the deaths in custody of two officials from the National League of Democracy - the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi - have cast an even grimmer light on the military's actions.

On Saturday, 6 March, cities across Myanmar were on edge.

Rohingyas urge anti-coup gov't to repeal controversial citizenship law

DAILY SABAH
BY ANADOLU AGENCY
DHAKA ASIA PACIFIC
JUN 06, 2021 

Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi (L) stands before U.N.'s International Court of Justice at the start of a three-day hearing on the Rohingya genocide case at the Peace Palace, The Hague, the Netherlands, Dec. 10, 2019. (AFP Photo)

Members of the Rohingya community issued a cautious response to a declaration of Policy Position on the Rohingya in Rakhine State by the National Unity Government (NUG), an anti-coup shadow government in Myanmar.

The exile government that was formed in April issued the policy Thursday. It proclaims to restore citizenship rights to Rohingya, starting long-stalled repatriation of the persecuted people and repealing a controversial 1982 Citizenship Law and the deceptive National Verification Cards system.

Global rights defenders hailed the declaration and recommended that it include Rohingya representatives in anti-coup and pro-democratic processes.

Rohingya Citizenship: Myanmar’s NUG to draft new charter to ensure it

The Daily Star

Porimol Palma

June 05, 2021

In a significant development, Myanmar's National Unity Government has announced drafting a new constitution and committed to ensuring citizenship and fundamental rights of all ethnic groups, including the Rohingyas.

It also pledged to repatriate Rohingyas from Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries, revoke the controversial 1982 Citizenship Law and National Verification Card, and invite them to join the shadow government in overthrowing the military junta.

"We invite Rohingyas to join hands with us and with others to participate in this Spring Revolution against military dictatorship in all possible ways," said a statement by the National Unity Government (NUG) Thursday.

The NUG, Myanmar's shadow government in exile, was formed by the ousted parliamentarians of National League of Democracy (NLD) in early April, more than two months after the military took control of the Southeast Asian country, alleging gross anomalies in the November 2020 elections. The NLD had won the election and was in the process of forming a government.

Ousted Myanmar politicians call for Rohingya to join fight against junta

the Gurdian

Rebecca Ratcliffe 

Fri 4 Jun 2021 

NUG says it will scrap law denying citizenship, in ‘notable step forward’ for rights of Rohingya people

A demonstration against the military coup in Monywa, Sagaing region, in April. The NUG statement said: ‘The solidarity of the entire people is now at its best.’ Photograph: Facebook/AFP/Getty Images

Myanmar’s parallel government has urged Rohingya to join with them in fighting the military junta, promising to offer justice and citizenship to the persecuted minority.

The statement has been welcomed by rights experts as “an important and notable step forward” in the movement for full rights for the Rohingya, who have faced decades of discrimination and violence in Myanmar.

Key Myanmar Pro-Democracy Parties Refuse to Meet With Regime's Election Body

THE IRRAWADDY 

20 May 2021

An anti-regime protest in Yangon on Feb.14. / The Irrawaddy

While many of Myanmar’s key pro-democracy political parties have rejected an invitation from the regime’s election body to a meeting on Friday, others have decided to attend it, risking public outrage.

OP-ED: A wake-up call for Bangladesh?

Dhaka Tribune

Nisath Salsabil Rob
April 25th, 2021

In handling the Rohingya crisis, it is time Bangladesh prepared for the long haul

In the wee hours of February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military -- the Tatmadaw -- declared a one-year state of emergency and arrested democratically elected leaders of the ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), including Myanmar’s former de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, thereby putting a nail on the coffin of Myanmar’s fledgling democracy.

Rohingya repatriation losing Int'l attention

Prothomalo

Raheed Ejaz

Dhaka
20 Apr 2021

• The budget for Rohingya emergency response is yet to be finalised

• $2.29 billion dollar allocated against the demand of $3.43 billion in last 4 years

• The joint response plan 2021 seeks $1.00 billion

Two and a half months have already passed since the Myanmar military seized the state power in a coup on 1 February.

As the time rolls on, protests against the junta government and bloodshed are intensifying.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has called a special summit to discuss the crisis in Myanmar.

Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is going to attend the summit in Jakarta, Indonesia on 24 April. However, the National Unity Government led by the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) has urged the ASEAN not to recognise the Myanmar junta leader.

The ongoing crisis in Myanmar and the global reactions on the issue has made uncertain the repatriation of millions of Rohingya people to Myanmar from the cramped camps in Bangladesh while the burning issue is losing the international attention.

The Arakan Dream: The Search for Peace in Myanmar’s Rakhine State on the Verge of Civil War

TERRORISM MONITOR
Jack Broome
April 9, 2021

  Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 19 Issue: 7

On March 23, the Arakan Army (AA)—an ethnic armed organization (EAO) based largely in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—finally released a statement condemning the military’s seizure of power in the February 1 coup. AA spokesperson, Khine Thu Kha, said that the AA was “together…with the people” and would “continue to go forward for the oppressed Rakhine people” (Dhaka Star, March 23).

Up until this point, the AA had held back from issuing any kind of response to the coup, despite an increasing number of EAOs having already declared their support for the civil disobedience movement (CDM). Some groups, such as the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is one of the AA’s alliance partners, have even begun to carry out attacks against the military in retaliation (Kachin News, March 12). Similarly, when the State Administrative Council (SAC), Myanmar’s new military government, announced on March 10 that it had removed the AA from the list of terrorist organizations, the rebel group made no formal acknowledgement of the move (The Irrawaddy, March 11).

OPINION - Political calculations to settle Myanmar crisis

AA

Ramdhan Muhaimin
JAKARTA, Indonesia
06.04.2021

Myanmar’s military coup has put Association of Southeast Asian Nation at crossroads

The writer teaches at the Center for Peace and Defense Studies (PSPP), University of Al-Azhar Indonesia.

Since the military forcibly seized control and forced the exit of the National League for Democracy (NLD) from the government on Feb. 1, the socio-political conditions in Southeast Asian nation Myanmar have again moved towards uncertainty.

The coup, led by the head of Tatmadaw -- the national armed forces – Gen. Min Aung Hlaing shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD won the election, has become a nightmare for people in the country.

Burma is at a crossroads

NEWAGE 

Dmitry Mosyakov
Apr 01,2021

— New Eastern Outlook

THE events occurring in Burma, where numerous street demonstrations have not subsided against the military, which took power into its own hands on February 1, 2021, continue to attract intense attention. The fact is that although a change from civilian to military power has taken place, it is absolutely unclear how events will further develop: whether the military will be able to retain power or, under the pressure of mass demonstrations and a split in its own ranks, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party members will return to power.

What next for Burma?

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOK

Thant Myint-U
18 MARCH 2021

With their recent coup d’état the Burmese army hoped for a surgical shift in power that would leave everything else more or less untouched. Instead, the coup has sent the economy into freefall, raised the possibility of international intervention and triggered a political earthquake. The fight is no longer over elections and constitutional amendments. One path leads to dictatorship without end. The other to a revolution whose exact shape is difficult to see. A crumbling economy may send the lives of tens of millions of poor and vulnerable people spiralling into disaster. And what unfolds in Burma may be impossible for the region, perhaps the world, to ignore: a failed state between India and China, at the heart of 21st-century Asia.

Tension had been mounting for weeks. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the country’s de facto ruler since 2016, won a thumping victory in last November’s elections. Taking more than 60 per cent of the vote, she was set to consolidate her hold over Burmese politics, vowing to push for constitutional changes that would limit further the army’s once limitless powers.

A fight is brewing over Myanmar's seat at the United Nations

CNN
Richard Roth and Caitlin Hu, CNN

March 3, 2021

Video Here

(CNN)The fight for control of Myanmar has now officially arrived at the United Nations.

In a letter seen by CNN, Myanmar's UN Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun has told the international body that he still represents Myanmar, after making an impassioned speech last week rejecting the country's military takeover.

Meanwhile, a deputy ambassador to the UN from Myanmar will claim that he is now the man the military authorities want to represent the country.

Both sides have sent the UN letters to make their case on official letterhead.

Anti-coup crackdown takes fatal turn

Bangkok Post

LARRY JAGAN
A SPECIALIST ON MYANMAR
PUBLISHED : 1 MAR 2021
NEWSPAPER SECTION: NEWS

Protesters run to contain tear gas fired by security forces in an attempt to disperse them during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon yesterday. AFP

Myanmar's security forces have unleashed a concerted crackdown on the country's peaceful protesters leaving 23 dead and thousands injured throughout the country in the last two days. In planned pre-emptive strikes, the police moved ruthlessly to disperse and arrest protestors preparing to join yesterday general strike. "They used teargas, stun grenades and fired live ammunition indiscriminately into the crowds," said Soe Soe, a young university student at a protest site told the Bangkok Post.

Down but not out

Bangkok Post
NEWSPAPER SECTION: NEWS
WRITER: ANUCHA CHAROENPO
PUBLISHED : 1 MAR 2021

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since Feb 1 but her whereabouts are still unknown. (Photo by Chanat Katanyu)

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) par­ty, and tarnished de­mo­cracy heroine of that country, hit the headlines on Feb 1 when she was arrested and deposed by the Myanmar military, aka Tatmadaw, in its coup.

Ms Suu Kyi along with other members of her party was accused of taking part in the Nov 2020 general election "fraud". Myanmar police have pressed several charges against her following the coup led by armed forces chief Min Aung Hlaing, including breaching import and export laws, and possession of unlawful communication devices.

ကုလသမဂၢဆိုင္ရာ ျမန္မာသံအမတ္ႀကီး ဦးေက်ာ္မိုးထြန္း NLD အစိုးရကိုသာ ဆက္လက္ကိုယ္စားျပဳ

VOA
ဗီြအိုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)
26 ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီ၊ 2021

သံအမတ္ႀကီး ဦးေက်ာ္မိုးထြန္

ကုလသမဂၢဆိုင္ရာ ျမန္မာသံအမတ္ႀကီး ဦးေက်ာ္မိုးထြန္းက ဒီကေန႔က်င္းပတဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢ အေထြေထြညီ လာခံမွာ NLD အစိုးရကိုသာ ဆက္ၿပီး ကို္ယ္စားျပဳေၾကာင္း ေျပာသြားပါတယ္။ သံအမတ္ႀကီးရဲ႕ ျမန္မာလိုေျပာ ဆိုခ်က္ အျပည့္အစံုကေတာ့ -

"မဂၤလာပါ။ ညီအစ္ကိုေမာင္ႏွမမ်ားနဲ႔ ေသြးခ်င္း ညီေနာင္ သားခ်င္မ်ားခင္ဗ်ာ၊ မိမိတုိ႔ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတဲ့ စစ္ တပ္အာဏာသိမ္းမႈခ်က္ခ်င္း အဆုံးသတ္ေရး၊ မိမိတုိ႔ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၊ သမၼတႀကီး ဦး ၀င္းျမင့္ နဲ႔ တျခား မတရားထိန္းသိမ္းခံထားရသူမ်ား ခ်က္ခ်င္းလႊတ္ေပးေရး၊ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္အာဏာျပည္သူ႔ ထံျပန္ လည္ရရွိေရး၊ ဒီမုိကေရစီျပန္လည္ရရွိေရး နဲ႔ ဒီမုိကရက္တစ္ဖယ္ဒရယ္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု တည္ေထာင္ေရး နဲ႔ ဒီ အေရးေတာ္ပုံႀကီးေအာင္ျမင္ေရးကို မိမိတုိ႔အလႊာအသီးသီးမွာ ျပည္သူျပည္သားမ်ားအားလုံး စည္းစည္းလုံးလုံး ညီညီညြတ္ညြတ္နဲ႔ အတူတကြလက္တဲြေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတာကို အထူးေက်းဇူးတင္ရွိပါတယ္။

Why did the Myanmar military overthrow the NLD government?

The Daily Star

Mohammad Abdur Razzak
February 16, 2021

File photo of Min Aung Hlaing with Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: AP

Myanmar started its democratic journey in 2011 with a quasi-civilian government headed by the retired General U Thein Sein. Before becoming President, he worked as a member in the military junta's State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1997. Later, he was made the Prime Minister in General Than Shwe's cabinet (2007 to 2011). Ahead of the general elections in 2010, General U Thein Sein, along with 22 other military officials, were sent on retirement from the Army to form and lead the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). USDP won the majority in a controversially contested election in 2010. General U Thein Sein was sworn in as the 8th President of Myanmar on March 30, 2011.

Myanmar's ruling NLD party says military statement 'suitable explanation'

THE Star ONLINE  

Saturday, 30 Jan 2021

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's ruling National League for Democracy Party (NLD) on Saturday said it accepted a military statement on the situation in the country as a suitable explanation, after the armed forces said it would protect and follow the constitution.

Myo Nyunt, spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party, which won a November election in a landslide, told Reuters the party wanted the military to be an organisation "that accepts people's desire regarding the election".

(Reporting by Shoon Naing; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by William Mallard)

 

Link : Here